There's No Magic Pill
it won't go away, but it can get easier
I’m going to keep this week’s post short-ish. My two sisters are visiting me from California and we’ve been doing stuff like swimming naked in lagoons and hiking in lava tubes and slurping down lilikois like geckos, so pardonne-moi if this isn’t the length you’ve gotten used to these past five weeks. If anything, you should be thanking me since you don’t have to read as much.
Sidenote: if you have been one of the ride-or-dies that has been reading along since the first week of January, I notice you and I appreciate you. Your support is life-changing and I’m not at all exaggerating.
I went into this year-long sobriety challenge last month hoping to fix some things about my life. It’s only been five weeks, and while A LOT has changed, there are certain things that have not magically remedied themselves the way my little pea brain imagined they would.
Three things alcohol will not fix:
Your Relationship
Just because you aren’t getting into drunken arguments doesn’t mean you won't ever argue again. It also doesn’t mean that thing they do which endlessly bothers you isn’t going to bother you anymore. If anything, quitting alcohol brings up more unaddressed bullshit, but the good news is you can deal with it in a way that isn’t as emotionally charged or damaging or traumatic as it once would have been.
Your Body Image
My sisters and I took video and photos at said lagoon. We have been talking about swimming naked in the ocean and documenting it for as long as I can remember; so when the opportunity presented itself Tuesday we all jumped at the chance. But when I looked at the evidence on my camera, I did not like what I saw. I am roughly 30 lbs. heavier than I was at this time last year and I simply do not feel hot or desirable or young, and those photos prove it. I’m hoping that I will drop the weight by simply not drinking, but it hasn’t happened yet so for now I just need to do my dumb little pilates videos and accept I’m now considered thicc.
Your Parenting Skills
Kids are hard to deal with and that’s all there is to it. On top of being little creatures that don’t know how to express big feelings, we bring our muddied childhood patterns into the mix and everything gets all mucked up. Is not drinking going to turn you into Job? (it’s a parable from the bible, TL;DR: Job had a lot of patience) No. You’re still going to lose your shit and yell sometimes. But maybe the next time your kid throws a remote control at your head, you go into the other room and count to ten before reacting.
Do with this information what you will, I’m only five weeks in. I ~feel~ the changes, though – and they’re good ones.